10 years later: How the Esperanza fire became a raging inferno that killed 5 firefighters

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In this file photo, CDF Tulare Unit firefighter Billy See is silhouetted in October 2006 as he and the rest of the unit provide structure protection as the Esperanza fire burns in Banning. Five firefighters were killed in the massive wildfire.

In this file photo, Gloria Ayala is comforted by her husband Tim Hoover and daughter Monica Ayala, as she clutches her son’s Daniel Hoover-Najera U.S. Forest Service helmet during the U.S. Forest Service Engine 57 memorial at the Glen Helen Hyundai Pavilion in Devore. Hoover-Najera was one of five firefighters killed during the Esperanza fire in October 2006.

McLean told his wife he loved her. He figured he’d be gone for two days.

The Esperanza fire started at 1:11 a.m. Oct. 26, 2006, as a flicker near old tires and crumbling slabs of concrete scattered below an isolated hillside west of Cabazon.

Crowds gathered outside the Morongo Casino across the 10 Freeway as Santa Ana winds pushed the flames up Cabazon Peak toward Highway 243 and a patchwork of San Jacinto Mountain communities.

The blaze soon reached 500 acres, and fire officials predicted it would grow to at least 50 times that.

At the fire’s origin, behind a low-wire fence, investigators that morning found the remnants of an arsonist’s crude handiwork: six wood matchsticks attached to a cigarette by a rubber band.

By 4 a.m., Loutzenhiser, McLean and three other members of Engine 57’s crew – Jason McKay, Pablo Cerda and Daniel Hoover-Najera – had rendezvoused with four other U.S. Forest Service engines at the fire command post in Cabazon. They were assigned to help with evacuations and to protect homes in Twin Pines.

The Forest Service had not lost a firefighter in the Inland area in nearly four decades, despite the hundreds of blazes each year in and around the San Bernardino National Forest.

No one had any reason to think the hours-old Esperanza fire was going to be any different.

‘Never going to believe this’

Staci Burger, McKay’s fiancée, never brought her cellphone to bed with her. But the night before the fire broke out, she did.

That evening, the couple had watched a movie with a forgettable title. Then, they shopped for groceries at Stater Bros., which McKay loved to do because it made them feel like an old married couple.

About 10:30 p.m., McKay, 27, went to the Alandale fire station near Idyllwild. The couple chatted by phone while he drove. After they hung up, Staci crawled into bed and called him again.

“I just wanted to tell you I loved you again,” she said.

For days, he’d had a feeling he would be called to a big arson fire. The station crews had responded to several smaller arson fires in recent months.

About 2:30 a.m., McKay called.

“Hey, you’re never going to believe this. We have a fire. It sounds like it’s arson,” he said.

The couple exchanged “I love yous” before hanging up.

About the same time, Loutzenhiser told his wife, Maria, over the phone that he loved her. Maria told her husband, who didn’t like fighting fires in Cabazon because of the terrain, to be careful.

Loutzenhiser had served 21 years with the Forest Service in and around Idyllwild.

After him, McLean, 27, was the crew’s most experienced firefighter, with seven years on the job. He was followed by McKay, a five-year Forest Service veteran, and Cerda and Hoover-Najera, both in their second fire seasons with the Forest Service.

Cerda, 23, had graduated from Riverside City College’s fire academy in May and previously worked as a seasonal firefighter. His friends called him “the mule” because of his strength.

Hoover-Najera, 20, had thought about driving trucks for UPS but joined the Forest Service instead to fulfill a childhood dream.

The octagonal house

By 5:15 a.m., Engines 52 and 57 had arrived at Highway 243 and Twin Pines Road. They then headed up Gorgonio View and Wonderview roads.

Engine 52 stopped to help an elderly woman evacuate her home.

Engine 57 checked on a tile-roof house under construction, found it empty and moved on. Engine 52 later stopped to protect the house.

The other three engines tried to make it down Wonderview Road about 5:40 a.m., but they were cut off by fire. They were directed to Gorgonio View Road, where they stopped at a blue double-wide mobile home.

About 6:20 a.m., a Cal Fire battalion chief met with Engine 57 at an octagonal house at the end of a steep dirt road off Gorgonio View Road to discuss what to do next.

Greg Koeller built the eight-sided dream home, located on a 3-acre hillside property and filled with natural light, in the late 1980s. Koeller was not home that morning.

Loutzenhiser and the battalion chief talked about the weather, terrain, locations of other firefighters and an area they could retreat to in case of trouble.

The crew set up a portable pump and hose at a pool next to the house. They also attached a hose to the back of the fire engine.

About 6:40 a.m., the battalion chief told fire commanders that the blaze was moving quickly toward Twin Pines Ranch Road. He recommended evacuations in Poppet Flats on the other side of Highway 243.

Minutes later, the fire skipped the highway and barreled toward that mountain community.

Esperanza was Hoover-Najera’s first big fire. He called his girlfriend Whitney Lingafelter’s cellphone between 6:45 and 7 a.m.

“Everything is fine,” he said in a voicemail. He called twice more but didn’t leave messages.

By then, 50-mph winds, steep terrain and plenty of dry brush had produced a firestorm with 90-foot flames and a column of smoke that reached 3 1/2 miles into the air.

About 7:10 a.m., a gully channeled the fire’s fury straight at Engine 57’s crew and the octagonal house they guarded.

Without warning

A wave of fire swallowed the house and its surroundings in less than five seconds.

The heat that hit McLean and McKay is almost unimaginable: more than 1,600 degrees, based on the damage to the fire shelters they had no time to unfold.

Neither had a chance to run. Both fell were they stood, near the fire engine.

Hoover-Najera ran around the house, away from the fire. He crossed the yard, then down and off the driveway. He collapsed in some brush, leaving a rambling trail of footprints.

Loutzenhiser and Cerda, who were near the pool, made it to the driveway before collapsing.

About 500 yards away, a finger of fire swept over the tile-roof house where Engine 52 was parked. The crew took refuge in the engine and escaped injury.

The crews of the engines at the double-wide mobile home, as a last resort, began setting their own controlled fires as a strategy to create a safe zone, and they also survived.

The other firefighters strained to see through the thick smoke. They couldn’t even tell if the sun was up. The wind pelted their faces with fiery debris as if they were in a cauldron of welders’ sparks.

Josh Spoon, a firefighter with Engine 54, covered his mouth with his gloved hands and dropped to the ground. He thought about his baby daughter and his wife. He wanted to go home, hold them and touch their cheeks.

Capt. Chris Fogle of Engine 52, Loutzenhiser’s best friend, got no response when he tried to reach Engine 57 by radio. It was still too dangerous to drive, so he and an EMT headed toward the octagonal house on foot.

‘I think they’re all dead’

Capt. Richard Gearhart of Engine 51 beat them there. He saw Cerda and feared the worst.

“They’re dead – I think they’re all dead,” he called out on the radio.

A minute later, he requested two ambulances. A minute after that, he called for four.

As paramedics checked Cerda, his eyes were open and he was alert, but he could not speak. His airway was badly burned.

Flames had charred 90 percent of Cerda’s body. Some of his protective gear had burned all the way through, exposing deep wounds.

A few feet away, other firefighters performed CPR on Loutzenhiser. Burns covered 100 percent of his body.

Fogle tried to comfort his best friend. “I held his hand and told him it would be OK.”

At 8:04 a.m., Fogle radioed for a coroner. McLean, McKay and Hoover-Najera were dead.

One medical evacuation helicopter was unable to land because of the strong winds. Two others arrived at 8:22 and 8:35 a.m. to take Loutzenhiser and Cerda to the burn unit at Arrowhead Regional Medical Center in Colton.

‘I’m worried about you’

Radio scanners in Idyllwild picked up the frantic calls. Within minutes, the town was abuzz trying to figure out which crew was involved.

In Beaumont, Karen, McLean’s wife, got a call from her brother just after 8 a.m. John Clays, also a U.S. Forest Service firefighter, asked whether Jess had gone to work that day.

“Engine 57 has burned over,” he said.

McLean’s wife, sister and mother planned to go to Loma Linda University Medical Center. But Clays called and told them to go to his house in Banning.

When they arrived, Clays came out of the house and broke the news to them.

About 20 miles away in Hemet, Staci, McKay’s fiancée, received a call at 10:30 a.m. from her aunt in Texas asking if she was OK.

“Yeah, why?” she said.

“There’s been three firefighters who died,” her aunt said. It was on television.

Staci turned on her TV. Worry set in, but she did not panic.

She called McKay’s cellphone. It went straight to voicemail.

“Hey, I’m worried about you. I just wanted to make sure you’re OK,” she said.

About 11:30 a.m., Staci called the Idyllwild station to get information. They confirmed the deaths came from that fire district, but did not provide names.

She called again and learned that the dead were from Engine 57 but that two were still alive. Staci cried and hoped that her fiancé survived.

Staci’s parents also were calling around for news. Her mother found out that McKay was dead, and raced home to tell her daughter before she heard it on television. Instead, Staci’s father arrived and told her about 12:30 p.m.

At the Loutzenhisers’ Idyllwild home that morning, Maria’s cellphone rang while she was in bed, but she did not answer it. Her boss and another employee left messages, urging her to call them back.

The phone rang again. It was her boss, asking whether she had heard about the fire and where Mark was.

Maria said her husband was on the fire. Her boss said he would be right over. A Forest Service official called and told Maria he wanted to talk to her. She knew instantly something bad had happened.

Maria found out that a firefighter on Engine 57 had died and others were missing. She later learned that her husband was still alive, but badly burned.

She felt relief, then sadness for the other firefighters.

At Arrowhead’s burn unit, Maria desperately wanted to see her husband, but she couldn’t. Mark was sedated and his airway burned, hospital staff told her.

As Maria talked on the phone with Mark’s 19-year-old son, Jake, who was in Santa Barbara, a group of people walked into the room. She knew the news was not going to be good.

Maria saw her husband after he died – she thought he looked OK, he looked like Mark.

She looked into his eyes.

He was alive to her. She hugged him and felt warmth from his chest.

The investigation

Family members continued to keep vigil over Cerda, who had been put in a medically induced coma.

The next day, as surgeons began the delicate task of removing his burned skin, investigators vowed to find the Esperanza fire arsonist and prosecute him for murder.

The county’s $100,000 reward to anyone with information leading to a conviction quickly grew to more than a half-million dollars.

Hundreds of tips poured in. Some in Cabazon described a pair of men seen walking casually away from the place the fire started.

Some 40 Riverside County sheriff’s detectives teamed with Cal Fire investigators and agents from the FBI and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, who brought in an arson profiler and polygraph specialists.

Investigators worked to connect the Esperanza fire with the string of earlier fires.

Some shared common characteristics.

At a June 9 fire on the Morongo Indian Reservation, investigators found six wooden matchsticks attached to a cigarette. The next day, investigators found a cigarette with seven wood matchsticks at another fire on the reservation.

Investigators also reviewed surveillance footage from cameras installed atop utility poles on Mias Canyon Road in north Banning, another area that had been hit by arson blazes.

On Oct. 22, a fire broke out near Mias Canyon Road and Bluff Street. The cameras showed images of a Ford Taurus in the area around the time the fire began.

Investigators linked the car to a 36-year-old Beaumont mechanic named Raymond Lee Oyler, who had a lengthy criminal rap sheet and a history of failing to appear in court.

On Oct. 27, Oyler agreed to be questioned by investigators at the Riverside County sheriff’s Cabazon station. He agreed to give a DNA swab.

An arrest

Cerda’s family decided to take him off life support on Oct. 31. He died about 5 p.m.

Doctors had removed 77 percent of Cerda’s burned skin in two operations. But the family declined to risk a third.

U.S. Forest Service supervisor Jeanne Wade Evans announced Cerda’s death about 7 p.m. Shortly after Cerda’s death became public, authorities announced Oyler’s arrest.

Earlier that afternoon, Oyler was arrested as a suspect in the two June fires. He was deemed a “person of interest” in the Esperanza fire. Arson investigators raided Oyler’s home.

Oyler was ordered held without bail after authorities presented key evidence to Judge Becky Dugan that night: DNA taken from the cigarettes used to light the June fires matched Oyler’s DNA; and devices found at the two June fires matched the matchstick-cigarette device found at the Esperanza fire.

The following afternoon, 30 investigators and prosecutors assembled to analyze the evidence.

They agreed unanimously: They had their man.

Prosecutors charged Oyler with five counts of murder. Besides the Esperanza fire, Oyler was charged initially with setting 10 other fires since June 2006; ultimately he was put on trial in 23 fires going back to May 2006.

Oyler’s attorney, Mark McDonald, maintained that his client was at home looking after his 7-month-old baby when the Esperanza fire broke out.

Sacred ground

A week and a half after the fire was contained, Roderick Rambayon and Gary Bicondova, among the first paramedics to the burnover site, returned to the scene.

Dried bouquets and firefighter uniform shirts marked the spots where each member of Engine 57’s crew was found.

Counselors encouraged Rambayon and Bicondova to put their thoughts in journals. Rambayon said it helped.

“I’m not normally an emotional person,” he said.

Bicondova said he was having trouble sleeping and he was more irritable.

Hoover-Najera’s grandfather, Patrick Najera, and his aunt, Vivian Najera-Bauder, also visited the site.

Patrick Najera went to the spot his grandson’s body was found. He dropped to the ground and began sifting the dirt for anything he could find.

He found a tiny swatch of charred material. It was from Hoover-Najera’s yellow uniform.

The grandfather put the swatch in a plastic bag. He then collected dirt from the site and put it in another bag.

“This is my baby’s dirt,” Najera said. “This is sacred dirt.”

Postscript

The Esperanza fire burned for five days before it was fully contained Oct. 30. It charred about 40,200 acres – almost 63 square miles – and destroyed 34 homes plus 20 other structures.

In addition to the five firefighters who were killed, 12 people were injured, only one seriously enough to require hospitalization.

The firefighters’ deaths sent the region, and the nation, into mourning. Grief overflowed at vigils, funerals and a public memorial service attended by thousands.

Memorials began to crop up, big and small – from lapel pins and bumper stickers that honored Engine 57 to parks and highways renamed for the hometown heroes.

Donations poured in: More than $1 million was raised, and state and federal lawmakers got involved to ensure the money was allowed to go to the families and wouldn’t be taxed.

The fire also inspired a reconsideration of how much firefighters should risk to protect property. It brought efforts to limit new construction in the highest-risk areas, and new firefighting guidelines intended to send a strong message to firefighters: that no home is worth dying for.

State and federal agencies quickly began three separate investigations into the fatalities.

A joint Cal Fire-Forest Service probe resulted in a May 2007 report that said “a series of risky decisions” by firefighters and fire managers probably contributed to the firefighters’ deaths. It faulted a firefighting culture in which a aggression is emphasized and safety downplayed.

The second report, released by the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration in July 2007, caused an even bigger jolt by directly blaming the crew of Engine 57.

It concluded that the firefighters disregarded an order from a Cal Fire battalion chief to evacuate before the flames raced up a hill and swept over them. Investigators who prepared the first report were not told that the battalion chief ordered the crew to leave.

The third report, not released until December 2009, determined that a combination of extreme fire conditions and an ill-advised decision by the crew to make a stand outside an unoccupied house was to blame for the deaths – but it found no misconduct on the fire line.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Inspector General’s Office inquiry could have led to criminal charges against fire personnel. But ultimately, investigators found no wrongdoing on the part of the Forest Service or Cal Fire.

Some wondered whether the reports faulting the firefighters’ decisions could jeopardize the case against Oyler.

His trial began in January 2009 and lasted five weeks. Oyler’s defense attorneys had conceded he set at least 11 of the 23 fires he was charged with setting, but denied he started the Esperanza Fire.

On the fifth day of deliberations, jurors told the judge they couldn’t come to a consensus. He urged them to keep trying, and the next day they reached a verdict:

Guilty on five counts of murder, 20 counts of arson and 17 of using an arson device.

Oyler was sent to death row, where he remains. But in an appeal filed this summer, his attorney is seeking to have his convictions overturned and a new trial ordered.

In tragedy, there is education, fire officials said on Esperanza’s five-year anniversary.

Images of the fire and the location of Engine 57 are used to demonstrate to new firefighters how quickly fire can spread, Tom Harbour, the Forest Service’s director of fire and aviation management, said in a 2011 email. Officials also developed a pocket guide for firefighters to use in times of chaos.

“The U.S. Forest Service is committed to learning from the Esperanza incident and to doing everything possible to prevent that kind of an accident from happening again,” Harbour said.

About this story

One month after the Esperanza fire killed five Inland firefighters, The Press-Enterprise, now part of the Southern California News Group, published a detailed reconstruction of the fire’s first hours and days.

It was based on interviews with family, friends and colleagues of the Engine 57 firefighters; witnesses and residents of Twin Pines; fire officials from the U.S. Forest Service and Cal Fire; and Raymond Lee Oyler and his attorney Mark McDonald. Details of the burnover incident came from the following documents: the Cal Fire “Green Sheet” accident review; the USFS 72-hour incident report; the federal communication dispatch log from Oct. 26; and Riverside County assessor’s office initial damage assessment for the Esperanza fire. Court records included the criminal complaint filed against Oyler and an affidavit filed in support of revoking Oyler’s bail.

Doug McIntyre is host of "McIntyre in the Morning" on 790 KABC in Los Angeles, heard weekdays from 5-10am. He also hosted "Red Eye Radio" both locally and nationally and has been talking into a microphone for 20 years. He writes a weekly column for the Southern California News Group.